JAY — The shot didn’t feel right out of Kaine Hutchins’ hand. He thought it, and by circumstance, Dirigo’s comeback bid, would fall short.
It turned out Hutchins’ 3-pointer with 22 seconds remaining had enough distance to give Dirigo its first lead of the game and, after Spruce Mountain’s bid to answer came up short, resulted in a 60-58 come-from-behind win for the unbeaten Cougars in a fast, physical MVC heavyweight bout.
“I didn’t think I should have taken that shot,” Hutchins said. “As soon as I took it, I was like, ‘Aw, I want that one back.’ It actually felt a little short. I think I was moving forward a little bit.”
“Kaine will say that, but he’s probably one of the best shooters in the league,” Dirigo coach Travis Magnusson said. “There’s not a shot we wouldn’t want him to take.”
Hutchins’ trey finished off a fierce Cougar rally that brought them back from 17 points down late in the third quarter. What got them there was stifling defense that limited the Phoenix to two field goals in the final 9:30 and a collective shooters’ mentality that forgot their 12-for-44 shooting through the first three quarters and exploded for 8-for-13 accuracy in a 26-10 fourth quarter.
“Before the game, coach said ‘This is one of the best shooting teams I’ve ever coached, so the thing we need is, every time you shoot the ball, you need that confidence,'” Hutchins said.
That confidence led Hutchins to knock down a pair of key 3-pointers and Tyler Frost to drill another for his only points of the game as the Cougars (5-0) started punching holes in the deficit. Riley Robinson complemented that marksmanship by getting to the free-throw line and fighting through heavy traffic for inside offense while scoring 10 of his game-high 21 points in the fourth quarter.
Robinson added six rebounds, seven assists and five steals to the stat sheet. Hutchins finished with 14 points and Dylan Kidder scored six of his eight points in the fourth quarter to go with 12 rebounds.
Scottie Hall led the Phoenix (5-2) with 15 points, while Deonte Ring added 14 and Andrew Darling 10.
“I think Dirigo picked up their intensity a little bit and they were maybe a little bit more aggressive,” Spruce Mountain coach Chris Bessey said. “Things that were getting called in the third quarter maybe weren’t in the fourth and that led to our collapse. We missed some key foul shots and didn’t get stops when we needed to.”
Robinson and Hutchins pinpointed the moment Dirigo’s intensity picked up, although it actually came several minutes before Spruce extended its lead to its highest point.
“Coach Magnusson’s technical was the biggest play of the game. It energized us,” Robinson said. “He is such an energetic guy that he fired me right up. He fired the team up.”
“I don’t think it was that,” Magnusson said. “It was all our guys’ mental toughness and heart. We didn’t really make a ton of adjustments. They just picked it up.”
Magnusson got T’d up after calling a timeout and animatedly protesting the way the whistle was blowing as an already physical game became a rumble to start the second half.
Dirigo trailed, 35-26 at the time. Hall hit one of two of the technical free throws to start a 12-5 Phoenix run, which he capped with a 3-pointer that made it 48-31 with 1:30 left in the third.
The Cougars cut the margin to 14 by the end of the quarter. Both teams entered the double bonus early in the fourth, which was to the more aggressive team’s advantage. Free throws by Robinson and Kidder and Hutchins’ first 3-pointer got the run going.
Frost made it a two-point game with 2:59 to go. After Hall converted one of two at the line, Robinson scored inside to make it 53-52 Phoenix. Darling answered with Spruce’s first field goal of the quarter with 1:47 left and the lead stayed on the alternating one-point, three-point swivel until Robinson’s steal at midcourt set up Hutchins’ 3 that finally put Dirigo in front, 59-57.
Spruce Mountain controlled the first half on the strength of 11-for-21 shooting, including 4-for-8 from beyond the arc. Dirigo, meanwhile, couldn’t find the range, missing its first 13 3-point attempts while shooting 10-for-33 overall from the field.
“Credit to Spruce. They did a great job of mixing it up on us,” Magnusson said. “They kept switching their defense and we really didn’t know what they were going to be in, and they played really well. We just played a perfect fourth quarter.”
Dirigo did get to the line 17 times in the first half, although its shooting woes carried over there as well (53 percent). But they crashed the offensive glass for 11 second chances, which translated into a dozen more shot attempts, a few extra trips to the charity stripe and a five-point deficit that could have been a lot bigger.
“They’ve got more heart and they’ve got things that our team doesn’t right now,” Bessey said. “They’ve got the Dirigo confidence that even if they’re down what they were down, they can come back and win. They try harder. Our team right now is not like that.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
